Fresh Apples

mimi has been a hardworking girl for lo, these many years, and since this is the last year of National Board bonus money, it was time to upgrade. The nice people at the Apple store have sent me (courtesy of my credit card, of course) this lovely wee MacBook.So shiny! So pretty! So fast! mimi is v. excited about possibilities and has already downloaded a fresh new copy of Scrivener so she can...
read more

The Word Series

Props to Novel-T, which has created a lineup of American literature-inspired T-shirts. The baseball-themed shirts feature iconic characters and writers, like Hester Prynne, Moby-Dick and Captain Ahab, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and writers Whitman, Poe, and Thoreau. Each “jersey” features an icon befitting the player, like a whale (duh), a Captain’s “C,”...
read more

The Passing of a Legend

Yesterday brought the sad news that one of my all-time favorite authors, Dick Francis, passed away at the age of 89. I’ve blogged about my Francis Fangirl status at length–and seriously, if you love mystery and you haven’t read any of his books, you’re cheating yourself of a treat–but today is a wee celebration of his life and work.Francis, a former steeplechase...
read more

Roundup

Closing the book on 2009–it’s been a good year. Interesting. Weird. Frustrating. You know, the usual. I did manage to read 135 books (some re-reads, but mostly new titles). I’m finally unstuck with the current WIP, and even though it’s moving more slowly than I’d like, it’s moving. We took a family trip to Washington, DC (awesome!), rode/survived the train,...
read more

Romance is the Shizz, Y’all

Check out this terrific blog about romances posted to DailyKos by Laura Clawson, a self-proclaimed romance lover who also happens to be an Ivy-League Ph.D. with, as she says, “nary a pink sweatsuit in sight.” She does a great job deconstructing many myths about romance novels and their readers. You know, the “porn for housewives” and “rape fantasy” memes that...
read more